At 12:47 PM +1000 6/8/06, Chris wrote: >tedd wrote: >>At 10:56 AM +1000 6/8/06, Chris wrote: >>>tedd wrote: >>>>Hi gang: >>>> >>>>I've read that php sessions can create problems for Google bots.
-snip- >>Chris: >> >>Thanks -- after your lead, I found that my site's session.use_trans_sid was >>turned off by default. >> >>So, it wasn't the problem I thought it might have been. > >So your page urls don't automatically append the session id to the end? I >might have the wrong variable name so if you're still seeing them, I obviously >have it wrong... No, you're right and my url's are clean of SID's -- they always have been, that was the default. The "problem" I was trying to figure out was how the use of SID's cause SE's to fail and how that works. I figured that once I understand how that worked, then I could keep from doing it. I just needed to "see for myself" what it was. You know, one of my "wonder why this works" studies. While the problem wasn't present for me, which at the start of this I wasn't sure about, I did learn how it works and why SE's have problems with indexing url's that have "?" in them. For those interested in this thread, this is what I believe is happening. If you have a web page that uses SID's in it's url, then it appears to a SE as something like this (using one of my sites as an example): http://ancientstones.com?PHPSESSID=1234 and not like: http://ancientstones.com/ So the SE grabs the page with the SID. The next time it travels your site, it see's: http://ancientstones.com?PHPSESSID=5678 and grabs that page. After a while, Google has numerous duplicate pages and has to pick one to be representative of your site and store all the others into it's supplemental index. Now when Google determines PageRank for your site, it does so by calculating how many sites link to your site (simple version). If Google has picked: http://ancientstones.com?PHPSESSID=5678 to be THE representative for your site, then you're sunk because no one uses a SID in their link to your site. Your site will always have a PR of 0 -- as it is with the referenced site. While the site ranks very high (currently #1) in a Google search for "Custom Tile Medallions", it has a PR of 0. I was trying to figure out what was happening and if there was something I was doing in using php caused the low PR. I found that PHP wasn't the problem -- and now I know that. At least, that's the way I understand what's going on -- if I'm mistaken, please correct me. tedd -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ http://sperling.com http://ancientstones.com http://earthstones.com -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
